Michigan’s 196.975 still stands as the top score in the country after yesterday’s very first-meet showing from pretty much every team. We’ve got two big meets happening somewhat simultaneously today, but I’ll try to keep on top of it. Here’s the whole schedule:
Of note in this LSU intrasquad video from yesterday, we see a lot of Lexie Lee and no McKenna Lou. (Right?) Though there are a number of gymnasts we don’t see, so…
5:00 ET/2:00 PT – Nor Cal Classic ([8] Stanford, [14] Cal, UC Davis. Sacramento State @ San Jose State)
5:00 ET/2:00 PT – [10] Auburn @ [12] Oregon State
As always, the full schedule is available at the link at the top. Note that Arkansas and Boise State will not be competing this weekend.
FRIDAY
-Let the live blogging begin! I’ll be here from the start, though there aren’t any really enticing matchups on Friday (you’re not even trying…), so I’ll probably bop around from meet to meet, missing everything important. I do want to make sure to watch a fair chunk of Nebraska since we rarely get to see Nebraska during the season. Florida against TWU will be broadcast on Aunt Flogymnastics, so those of you watching it are required to provide updates of honesty in the comments. You have your mission.
-For Florida, this will be a very comfortable win, but as I mentioned in the preview, I’m looking forward to seeing the lineup strategy. I’ll also be interested to find out where Peyton Ernst is at this point, how Alicia Boren does in her debut given how important she is to the team this year, and how many 10s Bridget Sloan gets. Over/under?
-There’s a little less mystery about Utah because we saw them at the RRP and they diligently release their lineups a million days in advance. This too will be an easy-peasy meet, but we’ve got a lot of event debuts (Lee and Schwab on bars, Merrell and Partyka on beam and floor), which is always reason for a keen eye. Bars and floor are the most depleted since last season, so watch for stuck-at-9.825-itis, though that may be expected to some degree this early in the season. But, is there potential to go much higher?
-Speaking of depleted, Nebraska has a bunch of empty spots in these lineups, and depth will be a major storyline this season. I’m hoping to see as many different freshmen as possible competing to give the team more options than I currently think there are. Let’s not make this not a six-AAers kind of season since that is the most nerve-wracking thing in the world. Someone find the bubble wrap. I’m also interested to see how Arizona State fills out these lineups, as in, can they? There are almost four people on the roster this season, but might it be a little less depressing than last year? A little?
SATURDAY
-Now that’s more like it. We’ve got two fairly huge meets on Saturday, which overlap because, once again, pull it together everyone.
-Georgia travels to Michigan to open the season, and this will be the first meet of the year that actually has an uncertain outcome. Michigan does enter as the favorite, however, competing at home and coming off an impressive first meet for a team that was in so many pieces so recently, but it’s not open and shut. As we know, the Wolverines are still not a deep team and will need the exact competitors they showed in Cancun to be competitive with the best teams in the country this year. But now, after the Cancun success, it’s 197 or bust. Anything less is a regression.
As of this point, Michigan’s strengths compared to Georgia look to be beam and floor given the troubles Georgia had on those events last season. The most important things the Gymdogs need to show in this first meet are a reborn, not-horrifying beam lineup (I’m hoping to see Cherrey and Jay and Schick among the new options to give this lineup some pop) and improved floor endurance versus this point last year. If they can prove those two events are under control, it will minimize any advantage Michigan might have in the second half of the meet. Georgia’s asset should be vault because of Jay and Rogers, though both teams are showing a solid number of 10.0 SVs. While bars will be very different for Georgia this season, for now at least the old story remains that Georgia needs a lead at the halfway point to have a chance. Please change the narrative, beam.
-The main event of the day, however, will be Oklahoma and LSU. Yikes. Showdown. I’m already excited. Nothing like starting the season by heading to LSU to test your mettle as the #1 team in the country. This should be an exceptionally high-quality meet, even in the first week of the season. LSU already looked in form at the preseason showcase, and Oklahoma always starts exceptionally prepared. I’m ready for both of these teams to hit 197 right off the bat, and I don’t think that’s a difficult accomplishment or expectation.
Depending on who LSU has available, these teams are pretty well-matched on vault and floor. LSU has the bigger routines 1-6, so give the Tigers perhaps a slight advantage but not enough to be decisive or conclusive as a prognosticator. It could go either way. The real challenge for LSU, this season and always, will be proving the equal of a team like Oklahoma on bars and beam. Oklahoma is going through its own little reinvention on those events, so checking how those lineups match up to those of the past couple seasons will be interesting. Still, bars and beam are Oklahoma’s events. It would be surprising to see any actual weakness there. LSU has a wildly, wildly talented crop of beam workers, but one that is unproven and without rock-solid lineup saviors. They’ll be thrown into the fire right away by having to keep pace with the storied Oklahoma beam, but that’s what it will take to win the meet.
SUNDAY
-Sunday also brings its share of fun with a 5 ET/2 PT triple-header of serious meets. For reference, I’ll be back for day three of the live blogging weekend for Alabama/UCLA, so if you’re watching either of the others instead, keep the rest of us posted.
-Though UCLA is at home, which always helps, the Bruins are not exactly known for starting quickly or being at top form in January, so Alabama has more on the line as the team that really should win. Much is expected of Kiana Winston (by me), so we’ll have to see how she looks since her cameo last season doesn’t really count. Winston is especially significant with Lauren Beers coming off preseason surgery, meaning she may not be normal four-9.900s Lauren Beers right from the start.
The vault decisions will be fascinating. Alabama has a number of 1.5 options, but we’ll have to see how many of them come to fruition right away, while UCLA has some work to do to keep pace while lacking the same pedigree of huge vaults. Paging Pua Hall. For the Bruins, this meet is all about Ohashi watch. Without Peszek and with Peng limited, they need a star to step up, and Ohashi is the nominee. That’s particularly true in this meet because if UCLA is going to win, it will be with beam loveliness since I do expect Alabama to be farther along and show more difficulty on vault and floor. UCLA’s beam should be exceptionally fantastic this year (though Alabama’s will be no slouch), and it would be really disheartening to see one of those UCLA January three-fall meets in such an significant showdown.
-Last season, Stanford started with not enough people to compete, so the goal this time is…enough people to compete. I have no expectations for Stanford early in the season because we won’t see real Stanford until, oh, mid-March (that’s pretty true for UCLA too), but gauging depth of scores, at least six potential competitive scores on each event, will be the major factor here. A prepared and solid Cal will smell blood again this season.
-Auburn/Oregon State may feel like the ugly duckling of the day since so much attention will be on UCLA and Alabama, but that should be a pretty competitive meet itself. Auburn has multiple new routines to try out, so we’ll have to see if this group looks like one that might become a Super Six team again in a few months. Or is it going to be a case of Caitlin Atkinson and her interns like it was in 2014? To tally the upset, Oregon State must show who besides Maddie Gardiner is ready to compete with top-10 teams. It’s the old refrain: where are the 9.9s? Right now, Auburn looks to have more of them because of Atkinson, and while it doesn’t necessarily take 9.9s to win in January, the location of the 9.9s is a serious mystery the Beavs have to solve this season. It would be nice to see at least the larval stages of a few of them.
2016 Outlook LSU enters 2016 wallowing in the aftermath of an extremely disappointing collapse at nationals last year (THE FRESHMAN LOST HER MIND) and, much more significantly, the departure of the class that lifted this program back into the big time. So, some trepidation about this season is understandable. It seemed that LSU would be relying on a super-talented, but often MIA and legs-made-of-dust, freshman class to have a shot at repeating the top-three quality of the last couple years. Very dangerous territory. Thankfully, the complete and solid-for-December lineups LSU put up in the preseason showcase (without Priessman and Kelley) were very reassuring as to the status and competitive ability of the returning core of this team. LSU is a Super Six team even if the big-name freshmen aren’t able to deliver significant numbers, and will challenge for the title if they are.
Key Competitor I’m going with Ashleigh Gnat. Gnat spent the first two years of her LSU career hanging out around the 4th spot on her main events, a prominent contributor on whom the team relied for scores but not necessarily the lineup leader or an absolutely essential score. When she had the occasional bad one, Courville and Jordan (or Hall on floor) were there to pick up the slack and save a great rotation total. Without them, Gnat will be expected to anchor multiple lineups and get 9.9s on vault, beam, and floor every single time, which is a new role and a new level of responsibility. In the absence of Courville, she has to become a Courville to keep LSU on track.
Vault
Under ideal health circumstances, LSU’s vault lineup will be Gnat, Priessman, Savona, Ewing, Kelley, and Hambrick. That’s a serious 49.4+ group even without the benefit of Courville’s mile-long vault (the start-value change also mitigates LSU’s vault losses since Courville and Jordan wouldn’t have scored as well this year anyway). Gnat continues to vault the DTY, which is developing into a US-elite level DTY that would provoke a tropical storm of Amanar rumors were she elite and competing it at Classic. She’ll be the head vaulter for the Tigers, and let’s hope the new values adequately reward her difficulty now instead of giving her a 9.875 every time and placing her on par with average yurchenko fulls.
When Priessman is able (she’s expected to return on at least bars by mid-January), she’s more than capable of producing a 10.0 SV since her Amanar remained only somewhat terrifying all the way through 2012, after which she was completing DTYs quite easily. Complementing those two will be Savona and Ewing, who both made their way into the vault lineup last season with sufficiently powerful 1.5s that will be even more valuable this year. With what should be four 10.0 starts and two other strong fulls, this lineup boasts both the difficulty and the execution to be a top-four vaulting team. At least. For the remaining fulls, I’d go with Kelley for her power and Hambrick for her incredible perfect perfection made of perfect. Her vault is a total joy and one of the few that qualifies as artistic. She can still hit 9.900 with a full this year.
When any of these six aren’t available, both Cannamela and Macadaeg have perfectly acceptable fulls (Macadaeg has nice pop but isn’t as steady on the landing) that should be able to score into the 9.8 range themselves and keep everything on track.
Bars
Bars is the worry event. While the Tigers have more than enough 9.800-level gymnasts to put together a workable lineup, they’ve been bleeding bars leaders for the last couple seasons in Morrison and now Courville and Jordan, leaving the team with mostly supporting characters and few stars. Conclusion: Sarah Finnegan. Finnegan has the toes, handstands, and general “she’s Sarah Finnegan” to become one of the strongest bars workers around, especially now that she can get rid of a few of those pesky elite skills that gave Elfi a case of the post-diarrhea moans at 2012 Trials. Finnegan will need to become the new 9.9er. Priessman must also contribute, though her bars execution score in elite was not always so much with the great. Still, paring down to NCAA skills should give her something cleaner that can be a definite mid-lineup routine if not necessarily a starring routine the way Finnegan’s should be. On twitter, Yosemite Clark took a short break from being the whole problem to post a video of her routine, which was fine if a little whippy in the DLO and a little leg-breaky in the pak. These freshmen must boost the competitiveness of this group since LSU doesn’t return very many natural bars workers. There is Zamardi, who developed into a good 9.850-9.900 last year after being MIA her freshman year. Zamardi’s double arabian dismount still scares the bejesus out of me, but she has proven a consistently countable score. Wyrick will also return to the lineup. Hers is not a memorable routine, but she doesn’t give away much in form and can go 9.900 at times too. With those four, LSU can be on track for 49.300, which is perfectly fine. Beyond them, however, the team will be relying on people who might prefer if the bars would just go crawl into a corner and die, like Savona and Gnat. Both contributed for 9.800s last year but have enough leg and angle issues to keep their scores below what a championship team should be getting. Hambrick is another choice (but she struggles with consistency), Kelley has a routine although it’s also not her event, and at some point Cannamela should develop into either a solid 1st/2nd routine or a safely usable reserve. Enough people exist to stay above water, but the question is how often this lineup will get stuck in the 9.825-9.850s/49.200s, especially early in the season if Finnegan and Priessman aren’t all that right away.
Beam
The loss of Courville and, especially, Jordan introduces a lot more terror and drama into the beam lineup this year. How many times did Jessie Jordan save everything in the 6th spot? LSU’s biggest mission on beam this year is finding a new queen bee who can hit even when everyone else is terrible. Theoretically the team still earns enough lovely points to make this event a huge asset, but can they survive the rotation or will they fall into a pit of lava a la nationals?
This is why Gnat must develop into a rock as an upperclassman. She has a tendency to get a little 9.7y in important moments and was one of the falls at nationals, and that has to go. She must be the solid lineup savior in case any member of the triumvirate of perfect finds that she’s just feeling too beautiful to stay on the beam that day. Obviously, by triumvirate of perfection, I mean Finnegan, Macadaeg, and Hambrick. The style, the elegance, the Kathy Johnson moans! Hambrick and Macadaeg both had hitting problems last year, but they’re lovely, give away almost no built-in deductions, and must return to the lineup. Finnegan is still doing the triple wolf, because she just wants to hurt me, but I suppose I can allow it since hers is not horrible looking. Regardless, she’ll be the same woodland beam heiress she always has been and will get a 20 every week.
I’d definitely take Priessman for another spot and then conduct an American Gladiator-style joust between Ewing and Kelley for the remaining place. Those are seven serious options and huge potential scores. When Lexie Priessman is the 5th person I mention on an event, you know it’s good. If they can actually figure out hitting, they can score with any team and should be right up there with Oklahoma and UCLA.
Also a couple notes from the preseason showcase: 1) Jessica Savona looked good. Where did that beam routine come from? Even the splits were solid. She might cause an upset by knocking out Ewing or Kelley or an inconsistent member of the triumvirate. 2) Every switch side was super crooked. Fix, please.
Floor
It’s LSU and floor, so even though Hall, Courville, and Jordan are no more, don’t expect the team to fall off in any significant way in 2016. Sure, there may not be anyone getting Hall 10s, but in time, this roster should develop enough 9.900-9.950 options to remain among the strongest floors in the country. The freshmen can be just as good as the departing routines. For both Priessman and Kelley, floor is the obvious specialty. It was Priessman’s floor tumbling and secure landing of difficult acro that had her on many people’s Olympic forecast during her larval stage, and Kelley is just a concentrated rubber ball of DLO/Mary Lou energy. That extreme-facial-reactions LSU judge is going to fall into the sky about McKenna Kelley. When healthy (and Kelley is supposed to be back to full strength for the beginning of the season), these two late lineup powerhouses should rack up the 9.9s.
The other members of the 9.9 brigade will be Gnat and Savona. Early in Gnat’s career she struggled with tumbling pass consistency, but last year she was a weekly 9.9 (ending the season on a streak of nine consecutive floor scores of 9.900 or greater, which is pretty impressive). As for Savona, the majority of her floor routines are worthy of 9.900, though last season she was getting stuck with some 9.850s in the first spot. Promoted back out of that spot this year, she should score pretty close to Gnat. These four will keep LSU in the 49.4s. Ewing competed consistently last season, so count on her to return with her front 2/1 and acceptable twisting form, along with perhaps Hambrick or Wyrick. Both of them competed in the preview and are opening with E passes this season, making it pretty likely that LSU will have six E-pass floor routines this season. As for Sarah Finnegan, she got the requisite “she’s the artistic one” Jessie Jordan choreography this year, though there are sufficient floor options that the team will have the luxury of saving Finnegan for bars and beam depending on how bubble-wrapped she needs to be.
On to the next set of hopeful young freshmen! We’ve got several volumes of Lexie Priessman injury history to get through, so let’s get going.
LSU
It won’t be an easy little stroll through the meadow for LSU this year. Every possible gymnast in the universe graduated after last season, so now it’s just Jay Clark and one grip sitting there writing poems about loneliness. The problem is actually not so much the number of lost routines (there’s still a solid core) as the value of those routines. Seven of the eight 5th-6th routines from last year are gone, which means a hefty little number of 9.9s will need to be sculpted from somewhere TBD that may or may not exist. The good news is that this year’s freshman class is wildly talented.
Let’s start by addressing Lexie Priessman. It’s hard to believe she’s just now starting college because even when she was a junior elite she already looked like she had just moved to New York to get a job in PR, while all the other girls were like, “I’m four.”
We all know what a healthy Lexie Priessman would be capable of, at least if we can remember back that far or if “healthy Lexie Priessman” is still a possible theoretical state of matter. She could be an absolute ridiculous star on vault and floor, and also everywhere because Lexie Priessman. I’m pretty interested to see what she ends up putting together on bars and beam (fingers crossed) because as an elite, her form could get pretty ragged on those events, becoming more pronounced as time went on. That seemed to be primarily a function of pushing the D-score via skills that weren’t actually great ideas for her, but we’ll have to see if an NCAA routine is indeed a much cleaner prospect.
Of course, the only real question heading into Priessman’s NCAA career is what shape she’s in. And I don’t mean shape like fitness. I mean what actual geometric shape she is. Triangle? Rhombus? Pentagram? Having endured years of the emotional and physical turmoil of OCD Sunday School, we can never really be sure. The mystery deepens. Priessman has been in various states of extreme leg-disappearedness for the last, oh, 600 months, ever since MLT put that hex on her where every time she does a skill, her body breaks into a thousand pieces. Her level of MLT-breaks will be the deciding factor as to where she ends up on the huge-star/injury-retirement scale. Can she get back to full strength? At some point?
Keeping on the topic of relatively unknown quantities post-2012, remember how obsessed you were with Sarah Finnegan for 11 minutes? Well, she’s back. It’s really exciting. We hope. The trouble is that we haven’t seen any real gymnastics from her since the late 1950s. Is she healthy? Is she doing all the events? Is she a tatted-up truck driver now? We have no way of knowing. Finnegan was excellent all-around during her shooting-star elite career, though I have to think bars and beam will be her key events (especially post-Courville and Jordan, and post-that thing where she competed gymnastics). Both those lineups need 500ccs of undiluted Finnegan, stat. (That’s her doing a lovely DLO off bars in the training video above, right? I have a lot of ID problems…) In case you also need a refresher about Finnegan’s heavenly beam routine, this is important viewing, mostly because there’s some priceless Elfi and Tim at the beginning about her really unique wolf turn. It’s an excellent lesson in what it sounds like when Tim is 100% done with your life.
Finnegan and Priessman are intended as the replacement stars for our dearly departed favorites, but because of their injuries/lack of competition in the past eon, LSU will have to lean pretty heavily on the rest of this class to be sturdy workhorses and fill in many of these lineup gaps.
The very best thing about McKenna Lou Kelley entering NCAA is that we finally get to stop going, “Wait, are you even an elite? Then why are you at Marthaville every day?” Humanity must collectively and immediately stop trying to make MARY LOU’S DAUGHTER AHHHH happen, so it’s already better. McKenna Lou is a powermansion on floor. She has a totally casual DLO and will need to become a major force in replacing those lost late-lineup floor scores. Now we just need to teach her a seat drop. It’ll go fine. Also, sometimes Mary Lou has 18 pulmonary spasms of motherhood during her routine.
Kelley vaults a full, but it’s a pretty big full that should be something usable for the team in spite of the scoring downgrade. It can complement the returning 10.0 SV vaults from Gnat, Savona, and Ewing. Bars and beam are more of a question. She brings that same power to her acro skills on beam, but the dance elements can be a little underbaked, and on bars the current state of her leg form and handstands may hold her back in spite of her skill set.
The sleeper in this class is going to be Julianna Cannamela. She really stands out in the above training video (she’s the redhead), and not just because it’s easy to identify which one she is. But mostly. The individual skills she shows in that video look stronger than they did in the JO routines I’ve seen (especially that pretty good floor DLO and usable full on vault), and that’s always a good sign. Cannamela was consistently acceptable across four events as a JO gymnast, which is somewhat rare. She seems like the type who could give you a 9.850 on any event when called upon, which given the injury histories here, will be essential.
There isn’t much extra baggage in this freshman class. It’s big, but all five gymnasts should be contributors. Kaitlyn Szafranski was among that gaggle of Parkettes who tried junior elite a million years ago, and the LSU coaches seem to be high on her bars potential. That’s understandable since she does have a serious Ray going on, but the routine isn’t all the way there. Her JO work exposes some form issues, especially with leg breaks and piking in the DLO, but I expect it to be one of those Jay Clark projects. It will especially necessary because LSU looks relatively devoid of true bars women this season, again having to rely on a few people who can do the event but don’t love it (the Gnats, the Savonas, etc…)
GEORGIA
Thank you for the IDs, Emily!
Georgia is in quite a different position from LSU, retaining the large majority of important routines from last season (so, Jay and Rogers). It’s mostly bars where the Gymdogs will need to restock, with Chelsea Davis gone and Kiera Brown having been…quietly removed. Beam could also use some new big scores after last year’s 9.825-a-thon (which is slightly worrying because this freshman class doesn’t particularly love life, and by life I mean dance elements, on beam.)
Expect Gracie Cherrey to be a significant part of the bars project with her big Ray and useful bail. She’ll need to turn those pieces into a realistic mid-late-lineup option to support what will obviously be constant and automatic 10.000s for Her Ladyship. The main concern I have right now for Cherrey’s bars routine is the crazy legs on the DLO. They’re a little EHH and could compromise her score depending on whether the judges choose to notice that or just give her the full Alaina Johnson treatment. What’s a leg separation? Cherrey is also working a full-in on floor, and has received solid scores for her double-back routines in JO. It will be interesting to watch that progress since Georgia had a somewhat icy relationship with E passes last season, pushing to get them into the routines around mid-season but not performing them cleanly enough to be worth it. Will they make a point of forcing those passes into routines earlier this season? Or just go for clean D elements?
One person who will be expected to bring the power and difficulty is Sydney Snead, the first Dr. Seuss character to join a D1 NCAA gymnastics program. She has a stellar 1.5 on vault, and if you put her along with the three returning 1.5s, Georgia is among the programs best positioned to take advantage of the new vault values. Snead also shows a piked full-in on floor that she has been performing regularly as a JO gymnast, which should be useful in stepping up the difficulty. While she’s primarily known as a vault and floor gymnast, her bars are actually pretty good. She has some toe point going on, at least, so I’m sold, even if there are breaks here and there. Originally, I had her in my head as a two-eventer, but I could envision more for her at some point.
Caroline Bradford is the late addition to round out the roster and the least likely of the three to make a splash, but as seen in the training video, she’s got some line on bars and that front on beam looks good. She was a solid finisher in JO back in the junior days, but then disappeared for a thousand centuries (presumably injuries) until this season, so we’ll have to see what she has been able to regain.
NEBRASKA A cursory look at the Nebraska roster for this year reveals that it’s…um…tiny. That’s nothing new. This is Nebraska. But now that Kamerin Moore and Ariel Martin have disappeared into the sands of time with Implied Injury Retirement Syndrome, the Huskers return just five regularly competing gymnasts (and just three floor workers from last year), meaning that by mathematical necessity, this year’s six freshmen have some work to do. Even though I would normally characterize this year’s new class as supporting players/spot contributors with an emphasis on bars, they’ll have to do more than that and compete on some events we wouldn’t normally expect them to do. Also don’t be surprised if this becomes another one of those 6 competitor, everyone does the all-around, seasons.
Sienna Crouse seems the most likely to contribute significantly. On bars she has a big, giant, humongous gienger and laudable amplitude in all her release elements, even if there’s some form to be worked out. I’m looking forward to that routine. She also has a front double full on floor with generally clean twisting overall, making her the only Nebraska freshman (as far as I know) coming in with an E pass. Given the need for floor workers to fill out that lineup and help Lambert and Blanske, that’s a thing. Her full on vault is a little touch-and-go. Sometimes it can be pretty low, but this is also Nebraska and they make a lot vaults.
The big vault in this class, however, comes from Megan Schweihofer. Her yfull is a Nebraska yfull and the girl can land it. She should figure in that lineup and hopefully on beam as well. She’s got something there, even if there’s a hint of leggishness going on. That full turn. I’d like to see her in that lineup. In the great search for floor routines, she has your normal double pike and double tuck, so that’s there if necessary.
Kami Shows is a case worth watching because I think she would have been a bigger deal coming in had she not torn her Achilles in 2014. It’s unclear what gymnast we’ll see at this point because while she used to have some solid height in her floor tumbling back in the day, she hasn’t done floor since 2013. In her comeback meets in 2015, she did only bars and beam. On bars, she has a shap and a pretty high tkatchev, so that will be a routine to keep tabs on. Catelyn Orel comes from GAGE, and I’m not really sure what we’re going to see from her. She never had the big JO career and didn’t compete in the major meets to give us a good scoring/ranking comparison, but she has your overall NCAA skill set: a pretty clean yhalf on vault, gienger and tkatchev on bars, double pike on floor, and some moments of general GAGEity in all of that, along with some form concerns like split positions on beam.
The rest of the class comes from Gym-Max, with Kelli Chung and Megan Kuo jumping in late to try to round out the roster. Chung has some good Gym-Max toes on bars and nice splits and leg form on beam, but they shouldn’t be significant contributors.
In other news, am I being dense, or do we not get embed code for gymnastike videos anymore now that they decided gymnastike was an OK name, but just didn’t remind people of periods quite enough?